1 The general assumption throughout this paper will be that the United Nations are determined to allow Italy a free hand in rebuilding her political structure within the framework of a constitutional and democratic regime, and that the primary factors affecting the long-term trends of Italian political affairs are domestic ones. Nothing, in the daily ups and downs which must accompany all great crises and in the various attitudes, alleged or true, ascribed to the governments of Washington and London seems to invalidate, up to the present, the substance of this thesis.

2 The text of the pact is as follows: “The Italian socialist party of proletarian unity and the communist party, firmly determined to achieve in Italy the political unity of the working class, a prime condition to enable it to fulfill with success its historical task of guiding the nation in the struggle for independence and freedom against nazism and fascism—with a view to organize concretely this unity of action, agree between themselves: (1) to create a permanent committee of united action to prepare a common socialist and communist platform on all political and social problems of interest to the working class; (2) to create a special committee to study all problems of a syndical nature so that the socialists and communists may proceed united in the class struggle; (3) to promote those political and organizational initiatives which aim at binding together all those popular forces (technicians, intellectuals, salaried employees, etc.), which, together with the industrial workers and the peasant classes, form the productive energies of the country; (4) to join all their efforts in the international field against any attempt to attribute to the people the responsibility for fascism, against which the people have fought an heroic struggle for 20 years; (5) in the carrying on of this struggle and in the common aspiration towards a peace fulfilling the conditions of life and of growth of the peoples of the earth and their sovereign autonomy, the two parties recognize in the Soviet Union the spearhead of the movement and the safest ally in the fight for freedom and independence against the forces of reaction and imperialism. They rely, too, on the solidarity of the British labor party, of the Anglo-American trade unions, and of the socialist and communist parties of the entire world, with which they have carried on the light against nazism and fascism.”

3 The Action party may, however, be another of the parties with which a close alliance is desired. Already on July 13, 19–34, the Avanti! was speaking of the existing agreement ameng the three parties of the left. Communist, Socialist, and Action.

4 Magrini, , Verso una Soculá Liberal-Socialista, “Quaderni Italiani,” 1944 no. 4, p. 59Google Scholar.

5 In this connection it was announced at the beginning of August, 1944. that charges would be presented against 310 members of the Italian Senate, out of a total of about 420 members.

6 “A unity imposed from above was the one of which Fascism was proud, but which, once tested, proved to be social decay and moral slavery…. The chief lesson of twenty years of Fascism is that all institutions and policies not founded on the clearest democratic basis, are unnatural and lack all strength.” (Battaglie Sindacali, Naples, 06 25, 1944)Google Scholar.

7 The partial text of the agreement is as follows: “I. The two confederations agree to consult with each other: (a) in the field of labor legislative policy, and in particular with regard to the political recognition of the syndicates and their representation in all the central and local administrative bodies in their broadest sense; (b) with a view to study, and if possible settle by common action, all matters relating to collective labor agreements and the conduct and solution of labor conflicts; (c) in order to submit jointly to governmental bodies measures with which to face the present tragic crisis of the working classes. 2…. The two confederations will resume their respective freedom of action with regard to the concrete issues confronting them, only after having ascertained the impossibility of an agreement.” (ibid.)

8 Il Popolo, Rome. 07 25, 1944Google Scholar.

9 At this point, Mr. John T. Flynn, that valiant champion of individualism, might want to interrupt by saying that even before Fascism, Italy had shown a distinct trend towards collectivism, state intervention, subsidies, and other similar financial policies, and he would be right. As a matter of fact, he has written a whole book (As We Go Marching, New York, 1944Google Scholar.) to prove that deficit spending by the government is one of the sources of Fascism. I am not concerned here with his main effort, which is, of course, to prove that New Deal spending is the antechamber of Fascism. But I would like to deny, without reservation, the validity of the part of the book which he devotes to Italy. Some of the figures used are incorrect. The interpretation of the right figures is wrong; and, in general, his view of Italian history is the product of his imagination. It is not true to say that Italy adopted before Fascism a policy of deliberate spending and deficit financing. Depretis, who is Flynn's “bête noire” and the presumed inventor of the modern theory of deficit spending, maintained a balanced budget for eight years, out of the 11 years he was in office, with an average yearly deficit in the three remaining years of less than 14 million lire, equal to less than one per cent of the total budget. How is it possible to build a case, on budget deficits which, as in 1887 (Depretis' last year in power), were the result of 1,454 millions of revenues and 1,461 millions of expenditures? Between 1885 and 1897 (not, by the way, 1884–98 as Flynn says), there was a series of deficits largely due to the need of providing the bare essentials of civilized living such as schools and roads which Italy lacked. Beginning in 1897 and continuing until 1911 (not 1910, as Flynn says) the budget closed each year with a surplus. This was the result of general improvement in economic conditions and of a deliberate policy of balanced budgets. It was not at all due, as Mr. Flynn says, to emigrants' remittances from abroad, which played a totally different role in Italian economy.

Mr. Flynn envisages a crushing burden of debt and taxation. This view is in contrast with all known facts. A public debt of 15 billion lire in 1913 was equal to about threefourths the national income of that time. This is certainly not an unreasonable ratio. Far from being bankrupt, the financial standing of the Italian government was very high, both at home and abroad. At that time, the voluntary conversion of the public debt from five per cent to three and one-half per cent bonds was successfully carried out, something no government in the condition described by Mr. Flynn could ever do. The alleged taxation burden had not prevented a steady economic improvement in the country. Indeed, taxes, both local and national, took, in 1913, not more than 18 per cent of the national income.

Mr. Flynn's disregard of facts is extraordinary. In 1895, Italy was not spending five times as much on armaments as on public works. The five-year average from 1892 to 1897 is 326 million for the army and 266 million for public works. The armament industry was never Italy's largest industry but one of Italy's smallest. The incidence of interest charges in 1913 was not one-fourth of the revenue but one-fifth and the important thing to notice is that it had been 37 per cent 30 years earlier. The representation of Croce as an imperialist is baffling. Don Sturzo would be interested to know that the Socialist and Popular parties combined and forced Giolitti out of power. To describe Giolitti's program in 1920 as a purely demagogic one, when that last of Giolitti's governments will be chiefly remembered by historians for the courage displayed in abolishing the so-called political price of bread, is unfair. The truth is that, faced by the difficult liquidation of the war, the Italian governments of 1919–22 set out to balance the budget, not shrinking from such unpopular measures as the abolition of food subsidies which a believer in the financial policies attributed by Mr. Flynn to the Italian governments would have retained.

It is disturbing to see the persistent failure to recognize the paramount significance of political factors in the rise of Fascism in Italy. If we are to bring in economic factors, then we should rather say that it was the failure of the 1919–22 governments to provide for adequate demobilization policies which was partially responsible for the economic chaos of that period, a situation, in turn, partially responsible for Fascism.

10 Lippmann, Walter, The Good Society (Boston, 1943 ed.), pp. x–xiGoogle Scholar.

11 For the best statement of the methods and ideas of TVA see its chairman's highly significant book: Lilienthal, David E., TVA, Democracy on the March (New York, 1944)Google Scholar.

12 Unitá, Rome. 06 25, 1944Google Scholar.

13 As Cecil Sprigge has correctly put it: “Fascism was essentially a phenomenon which acquired life from the failure of the… liberals of Italy to dispossess the small class of intriguers and traffickers who loomed intolerably large in the governmental system prior to 1915. It represented the absence, from the leadership offered by Italian liberalism, of men of firm principle, capacity for sincere utterance and contact with the everyday problems of the country. It represented the breakdown of the positions of authority held in part before the last war by such superior men, of whom as individuals Italy has never been and never is in want. The breakdown was procured first by an insurrectionary socialism of poor quality, which immolated the ideas of freedom and of the nation, to a hasty appetite for popular triumph, and secondly by Fascism, that connubium between the small class of outworn politicians whom the socialists enraged, and the counter-insurrectionary forces set in motion throughout the country—among the “small men” as among the rich - by the long exasperation of an unfulfilled social-revolutionary threat.” The Development of Modern (New Haven, 1944)Google Scholar.

14 cf., Sturzo, , L'Italia e I'Ordine Internazionale (Turin, New York, 1944) pp. 212–13Google Scholar. Recently the suggestion has been made (principally by Guido Gonella, in the columns of It Popolo, the Christian-Democratic daily), that a decision of the assembly on the monarchical question should be accompanied by a popular referendum, since organized political parties do not fully represent public opinion. This suggestion the Avanti! attacked, saying that Gonella was relying on the “ignorance” of the masses to nullify the decisions of the assembly. The cabinet has just ruled out the referendum. While the parties of the left consider the issue closed, other parties appear determined to press it further.